Book To Bank Author's Course Experience - Jessica Pontoo

Speaker: Jessica Pontoo

Jessica Pontoo: Okay, my biggest challenge before coming into the book, two bank authors program was the accountability piece. I had no accountability. Um and as a result I would say like I'm gonna write today, but then today happens and I don't right um or I'm gonna start next week or like I wanna, I wanna do a chapter or whatever, but there was no accountability. There was no one saying, hey, did you do that? Did you finish, you know what's going on? And so that's really what this program did for me and made me accountable to someone I knew that was going to have, she's gonna expect me to be ready um at a certain deadlines and it just gave me a push to know like You have 90 days to do this. And so there was no excuse, like I just had to make it happen. And so committing to that calendar, committing to those days, committing to that. Our even if it meant I had to go to starbucks and write for three hours to get back on track. Like I knew I had to be accountable to do what I had agreed to do.

Jessica Pontoo: Leading up to launch, I think I gained like almost 200 new subscribers. Um and I I had my own struggles with marketing because of facebook's new rules and I wrote a christian book um but I was just so encouraged by the feedback I launched two bestseller list in about five categories. Um like psychology of Christianity um uh counseling christian counseling, um like bibles and world books or something like like it was so great, it was like five different categories where I launched um number one bestseller, Number one new release. Um I just recently hit my first goal, like sales goal milestone. Um so definitely still working on hitting my milestones, but the response um that I received the um The feedback I got my 10 reviews, so I'm still working on getting that 11th one, but they were all phenomenal. And so that really changed the game for me because I published a book before, but it was like this quiet thing of like I you know, I kind of wrote a book, you know, instead of building out this community who really pushed me to produce something that was great and that people love and enjoy and continue to um to earn to to get stuff from. And so for me, even beyond like those accolades, like the confidence that I got because I produce something that people are invested in, like that beats all of the other things that I uh that I received along the way

Jessica Pontoo: I just kind of answered this question. Um so I think I gained the most confidence as um both as an author and um as a seller of my book, um I I gave my confidence as an author because I know that I write what I write, people find value in and that is quality. Um I also found value because I feel like I'm an author who produces quality work and who has something to say, who has a message that now has boosted my confidence to sell that, right? That I have poured myself into this project and that I don't feel bad saying now it's $20 and I feel like, you know, the first book that I released, I didn't want to charge um that much and even I would still be like, well you got five, you know? Um but just the other night, like I did I did an event and the lady was like, I really, really want this book, but I only have $10 and I was like. it's our amazon, you know, so like you're not gonna shortchange me ma'am, I need my $20. Um And so just the confidence as an author who produces high quality writing that people are invested in gave me that additional confidence to then sell that and and not shy away from saying I'm an author, I wrote a book, just like I pay for other authors books, like it's okay for you to pay for mine and that's that's what I'm gonna expect